Growing Pains Can Ruin Even The Best Projects

Soft, gently flowing curves of lawn-flanking shrub and flower beds add a sense of movement and a note of informality to the landscape. However, creating these curves can prove to be one tough project. Especially when you consider we’ll likely be creating those same curves over and over through the years.

A case in point: It was summer 1980 when we began to landscape our yard. Young bushes and trees looked so tidy against the gentle curves of the grass. One area was particularly handsome - a large kidney-shaped bed carved out of the center of the front lawn. A 6-foot blue spruce was placed toward the widest portion of the bed along with a few other well-chosen shrubs and flowers.

When it happened, I am not sure, but seemingly overnight those tidy young plants grew into gangly adolescence. Their boughs and stems pushed against the edges of the bed. It was either remove the plants or make the bed wider. Easy decision. Out came the shovel and out came some grass.

I wish I could say that was the only time the choice of plants over grass was made, but it wasn’t. As the plants grew, so did the bed. The little 6-foot spruce with its 3-foot base is now a 25-foot tree with a 15-foot base. Over the years, my clean-cut, kidney-shaped bed has been redesigned and recut so many times, it has taken on the shape of a giant amoeba with rough edges.

Designing, or in my case, redesigning curved beds can be a wee bit more involved than what is shown in garden books. The books suggest that a garden hose be used to outline flowing curves. But I’ve yet to meet a hose that didn’t come with an attitude.

Though many hoses come with a manufacturer’s guarantee that they won’t kink, I always seem to find the one that does. Even if the weather is 110 degrees, it kinks. It’s very difficult to outline a bed with a hose that kinks or ripples back and forth like a sidewinder. It’s impossible to nudge a stubborn fellow like this into place without sending more kinks and ripples somewhere else down the line. When this happens, it’s time to try another method for outlining the curves.

Sprinkled flour works much like chalk, as long as the wind doesn’t blow, the sprinkler doesn’t come on or Mother Nature doesn’t rain on the design. It also helps to get the design correct the first time. Too many mistakes and you’ll end up with paste as a top dressing for the lawn.

If you can find it, the type of colored paint used for marking underground powerlines also works well. Again, the design had better be perfect the first time. This material isn’t forgiving like flour - it won’t wash away.

Once the design has been mastered, it’s time to cut out the grass. For the best effect, use a flat spade rather than a shovel. Shovels have a tendency to create a slanted, ripple effect. This task may become tedious and painful for the foot, but it’s not half as tedious and painful as lifting and moving the sod. Lighten the sod by shaking off as much soil as possible before moving it.

Dispose of the sod by creating raised planting beds. Pile the sod upside down and cover it with soil. Of course you’ll need to create flowing edges around this new bed, too.

For the finishing touch (now, that’s optimistic), edge the bed. My lawnmower chews up and spits out plastic edging. Notched redwood or cedar 2x4s eventually disintegrate. Bricks, butted up against each other are spendy but at least they’re movable when I reshape the bed. Permanent edging is nice, but it doesn’t leave much room for poor planting practices or a change of plans. As often as I change and reshape beds, I am best served by a deep, crisp edge of plain old soil.

It’s back to reshaping the amoeba. If I keep this up for a few more years, I won’t have to worry about it. The bed and the street will simply merge.

The Sod Busters of Coeur d’Alene will hold their annual plant sale Saturday, from 8 a.m. to noon, at 716 A St., in Coeur d’Alene, a half-block north of the courthouse. There will be all types of treasures from which to choose.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Phyllis Stephens The Spokesman-Review